Scienceis the most powerful form of time-binding. It is the search for the truth.It is that process that humans use to discover the rulesthat govern Universe—todiscover the lawsof Nature.

Those who search for the truth—those who desire to discover the rules that governUniverse—those who seek to discover the laws of Nature—are called scientists.Kenneth Bouldingtells us that scientists can be divided into three groups:

“Writers, thinkers, and scientists can no doubt be divided into threecategories—those who are behindtheir time, those who are withtheirtime, and those who are beforetheir time. The first disappear intoobscurity, the second become famous and fill the history books, and thethird have to wait to be recognized.”1

Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, and morerecently Jonas Salk, Francis Crick, and James Watsonare examples of scientistswho belong to the secondcategory—those who are withtheir time. They are indeedfamous and fill the history books.

UnCommon Science will present the ideas and discoveries of a number of scientistswho fall into the third category—those who areaheadof their time.

It is painful for scientists to live and work ahead of their time. It usually means thatthey are not supported and end up sacrificing much of their personal life to thesupport of their own scientific work. Worse than this is the fact that they often workwith no opportunity for scientific feedback. They are essentially without peers.Sometimes they will discover a few who understand their work, but often they work inscientific isolation. These scientists who work ahead of their time have no opportunityfor dialogue.

“Discovery of truth, of reality, of what needs to be done to serve the goal,involves dialogue—asking questions, probing, investigating, testing. Thatis the essence of the scientific method which has brought us so far indiscovering important relationships that exist in the physical world.”2

Without benefit of scientific dialogue, scientists often create an eccentric languageand personal semantics to describe their discoveries. These eccentric languages andpersonal semantics can make understanding their works even more difficult.

The history of science is filled with examples of later scholars trying to decipher andunderstand the words and discoveries of earlier scientists who worked aheadof theirtime. And far too often, important discoveries are simply discarded withoutunderstanding and lost forever.

Many of the scientists whose work I will be presenting in UnCommon Science lived andworked ahead of their time. And some of them created eccentric language and personalsemantics to describe their discoveries. Therefore, I will occasionally play the role oftranslator, creating new metaphors and glossaries to serve as communicationbridges for understanding their work.

Many Voices

UnCommon Science relies heavily on the work of many scientists. Time-binding bydefinition implies that all scientific works must to a large extent be corroborations.Therefore I have abandoned the practice of paraphrasing the writings of others, infavor of presenting their work in their own words.

This is accomplished through the liberal use of “direct quotations” from theiroriginal writings. This sometimes makes for long quotations, but does allow the readerthe opportunity to experience the original concepts in voices of the scientists whomade those discoveries.

Taking great care to avoid disturbing the meaning of the original writings, I haveoccasionally acted as editor making minor changes to increase clarity, or to

underscore the relevance of a particular quoted passage to my own work. I have
sometimes addedboldfont or italicsfor my own emphasis.

Whenever and wherever, I have disagreed with a quoted scientist, I have made*annotationswhich are clearly demarcated by copper colored fontpreceded by anasterisk, or contained within(parentheses). This distinction is made to insure thatthe integrity of the quoted passages remains intact and uncorrupted.

My presentation of these original works of earlier scientists should allow the reader adeeper understanding of the process of discoveryand of time-bindingitself. Whilesome of the quotations are quite lengthy, your reading of them should not beconsidered as a replacement for reading the original works themselves. I havecarefully creditedand referencedall quotations to facilitate your finding theoriginals for your own independent examination.

Remember also that these quotations are themselves bound in time. They will all bedatedso the reader is aware of the time whenthey were written. I will also usevarious mechanisms to demarcate when other scientists are speaking to aid thereader in keeping track of the flow of ideas.

My voice

My use of extensive quotations in this volume means that hereI have often acted as aneditorfor others rather than as advocatefor my own science. I am honored to serveas editor for these fine scientists, and hope that my presentation of their work willmake them better known to their fellow humans, and allow them to receive the creditthey deserve for the great understanding they have added to human ‘knowing’.3

However, this is not to say that this volume is only in the voices of others. I too willspeak throughout adding my voice to this chorus of scientists.

Now as stated in the general Introduction to UnCommon Sense, I occasionally useredundancy to emphasize important points. Redundant materialis demarcated in adark blue font. Although some passages are redundant, they are always presented

3‘knowing’—I use single quotes around any ‘word’ that has different meanings in different contexts.This is to avoid miscommunication. This convention was invented by Alfred Korzybski to alert the reader tomultiordinal terms. See:Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, The Colonial Press Inc., Clinton,Mass., 1933

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in a new contextwhich results in new and additional meaning. Those readers who
examine the redundant material in light of this new context will gain the greatest
understanding. My reason for designating the redundant material with a special
font coloris to avoid the confusion of deja vu.

The next passage is our first redundancy. It is taken from the general Introduction tovolume one of UnCommon Sensethat was published as We Can All Win!—TheBasics:

Bootstrap to knowing

I entered medical school in 1966. In my first week, I would learn one of the mostvaluable lessons of my life.

A fellow classmate and I were in the medical library at our school. We had been readingsome science papers assigned in an earlier class, when I noticed he was reading onepaper, that I didn’t have listed on my assignment sheet. He seemed much moreinterested in that paper than in those from our assignment sheet.

My classmate would read a paragraph or two and then hurry off to the big medicaldictionary across the room. He made so many trips, I surmised the reading must bevery difficult.

Finally ,my curiosity got the better of me, and I also was beginning to worry that Imight have missed getting the assignment to read that particular paper, so I queriedhim.

First he responded by saying, “No, its not part of our assignment, I’m just reading thisfor myself. The author is a Nobel laureate.”

He started to return to his reading, but then he paused for a moment to look me overand for some reason he decided to share his secret with me. “It’s something more thanthat. It is a secret way to learn that my Father taught me.”

I leaned closer and he continued: “When you read and understand the work of aworld’s leading expert, you can become the world’s second leading expert.”

At first I didn’t know what to say. The thought was so foreign to me. I said nothing and

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returned to my study of the assigned readings. Later that evening after class, my
mind kept coming back to what my classmate had said, “When you read and
understand the work of a world’s leading expert, you can become the world’s second
leading expert.”

Shortcut

Could it really be true? Could getting ahead be as simple as finding out who the expertswere and studying their most advanced works.

To think that I could catch up to a world expert by spending a few hours in the libraryseemed an oversimplification, and somehow terrible at the same time. Science wassupposed to be much harder than that. In the next few years, I would learn thatscience is much harder than that and yet discover for myself the deep truth of myclassmate’s lesson.

Science was hard, and as I began using the bootstrap I discovered there was nothingeasy about understanding the advanced papers of experts. I had somehow missed theimplication of my fellow student’s repeated trips to the reference dictionary thatmorning in the library. Now I finally understood. There is a shortcut in science, butlike most shortcuts, the path is a more difficult one.

You can learn fastest from the world’s experts if you are ready to invest the effort tolearn the expert’s language, definitions and methods.

Since then, this lesson has served me well. I have saved years of study by using theknowledge of the world’s leading experts to bootstrap myself to a position of better andmore complete understanding. And always, with more understanding comes morecontrol.

I have filled UnCommon Sciencewith the understanding and wisdom of many of theworld’s leading experts. Please make their expert knowledge your own. Please invest afew hours in learning the language and methods of the experts and bootstrap yourselfto a more powerful and positive future.

The nonscientist reader may find some parts of UnCommon Sciencedifficult.Fortunately, it is not necessary to completely masterthis volume in order toparticipate in a synergic future.